John Betteridge: Two out of three ain't bad

Economists are pessimistic about future

clock • 4 min read

We are trying hard to understand markets, but right now markets just don’t seem to car, writes John Betteridge, who notes the disconnect between the exuberance of equities and gloomy economists could not be starker…

The recent coincidence of a return to the black for the S&P and the gloomiest ever predictions from the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), World Bank and the Federal Reserve seem to emphasise the disconnect between equities and economic outlooks. Lots of shouting but no listening. Both parties can't be right, so for now, they are going their own separate ways. We saw the deep economic dislocation that would occur as a result of Covid-19 lockdown measures, the likely quantum of policy response, but not the seemingly perverse reaction of equity markets (Figure 1...

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